Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Decide When to Travel Using Google Maps

Over the years we have featured many travel maps on Google Maps Mania (check out the travel tag or look under travel in the Google Maps Directory). All of these maps can be great guides in helping you decide where you should travel. However just as important as deciding where to travel can be deciding when to travel.

Joobli and GoGapYear are just two websites that can tell you when are the best times to visit locations. As Joobli says, for two or three days out of every year hundreds of cities around the world are the best destinations. This could be because of a Jazz Festival, a Cultural Fair, a Nature Event or whatever. The important thing is to know when to go.

JoobliThe Joobli home page features a very prominent time-line slider that can be adjusted to match the days that you want to travel. Just enter your dates and press 'Inspire Me'. Joobli then returns a list of events, festivals and happenings from around the world that are occurring exactly when you are free to travel.

Selecting any individual event will open a dedicated page about the occasion. The event page contains detailed information and a Google Map showing the event's location. As well as a marker showing the selected event other markers show nearby events that are also occurring during your planned time of visit.

GoGapYearThe British Government's Foreign and Commonwealth Office teamed up with Lonely Planet to produce this gap year planning tool built on top of Google Maps. The map includes photographs, podcasts and Lonely Planet reviews of tens of thousands of destinations around the world.

You don't even need to be planning a gap year to benefit from this amazing map - it can tell you the best weeks to hike the Inca Trail, go diving in the Bahamas, or when you should visit Stromboli in Italy.